How Millennials' Happiness Is Tied To Work Friendships

Human beings are naturally social creatures, but millennials seem to be taking this to new heights.

After many long years of being trained to keep “work” and “life” somehow separate, Generation Y is beginning to realize that this might not be possible — or even welcome. The modern workplace is a stellar place to make connections we wouldn’t otherwise, and the implications could reach far beyond the office.

More than any previous generation, the happiness of millennials at work seems intrinsically linked to the quality of the relationships they foster there.

Work Friendships Result In Improved Productivity

Pollsters and scientists are always uncovering fascinating connections between unlikely facets of modern life. As a result, the psychology of the workplace has become a burgeoning new field for inquisitive minds. Longstanding Gallup research is particularly relevant to today’s discussion.

In a 1999 poll that still feels extremely relevant, Gallup discovered that folks who indicated they had a “best friend at work” were 43% more likely than their peers to receive positive feedback at work.

What does this say about us? One interpretation is that our minds crave familiarity. When we’re surrounded by environments and people we’re familiar and comfortable with, everything else in life seems to fall naturally into place. Productivity and happiness have always felt closely linked, and now we know yet another piece of the puzzle: Happiness borne from real friendships can have a lasting influence on the quality of our work.

For proof that Gallup’s 17-year-old research is as timely as ever, we can turn to a 2014 survey by Censuswide and LinkedIn. The study focused on 11,500 working professionals and spanned 14 countries, and it reached a similar conclusion: 57% of respondents indicated having friends at work made them more productive.

More Valuable Than Money

If you were to rank the people in your life according to the amount of time you spend with them, what would you find? If you’re like most modern professionals, you probably experience more face time with your work family than with your brothers, cousins, aunts and potentially even your parents.

The places where we spend our time — and the activities we do there — are vastly improved when friendship is involved. Consider for a moment the average Facebook “friend” experience where you hover at the periphery of somebody else’s life, maybe tossing out an emoji or a witty comment when the occasion calls for it.

How much more “real” are the people in your office than these perfunctory online interactions? The answer is “quite a lot.” Work occupies the majority of our waking hours, so it simply makes sense to invest in the relationships we have there.

But take another step back and look at this from an intrinsic value standpoint. Much of the mental calculus we solve about our lives involves the financial benefit of what we’re doing. In other words, what’s the ROI?

Friendship in the workplace, it turns out, boasts a return on investment that rivals just about any other factor. When asked whether they’d swap camaraderie for a larger paycheck at a different employer, 58% of men indicated they wouldn’t make the trade. A whopping 74% of female professionals concurred.

It seems that friendship is one of our most valuable commodities — whether we consciously think about it in those terms or not. For the average millennial, it seems there are far more important considerations than the size of our paycheck, and peaceably collaborating with our friends at work looks to be among them.

It’s A Generational Thing

Take a look at how personal values change from one generation to the next. For older generations, sharing details about our family lives, significant relationships and even salary information can feel like a major taboo in the workplace. That’s the way it was for a long while, and despite several high-profile legal triumphs, “pay secrecy” isn’t a surreal concept.

These are encouraging trends. It means millennials are recognizing what their elders did not, and they are investing more than their time in the workplace — they’re also investing emotionally. The world seems smaller every year, and practicing a bit more camaraderie at work can make small changes that bring us all a little closer together.

Conclusions And Actions To Take

What we have here is vindication for everybody who’s ever called their colleagues their “work family” — and a much-needed kick in the pants for the folks who might have a harder time connecting with co-workers.

Everybody wants happiness, so how can millennials create the connections they admit are essential to productivity and happiness? For starters, you can consider skipping the small talk. One of the keys to building happiness-fueling friendships is to focus on what Jessica Amortegui calls “self-disclosure” about “non-workplace topics.”

Translation? Don’t make it all about work all of the time. Also, don’t fight so hard to keep your “work” and your “life” separate — if you do, you’re probably overlooking fertile emotional common ground in the workplace. Talk less about what you do and more about how you feel about it.

Whether you know it or not, you already have common ground, but to find it, you need to talk to each other less like employees and a little more like people.